The FCC voted to end net neutrality today. Congress can still stop it, so please contact your state congresspeople today to encourage them to vote against the FCC's bill!

To put this in perspective:
-The FCC is currently headed by a former Verizon lawyer. Not exactly an unbiased viewpoint, as the bill definitely favors internet providers like Verizon.

-If net neutrality is repealed, internet providers can charge websites for "fast lanes" while slowing down access to other sites. Comcast has already hinted at doing this.

-Providers can freely limit access to apps, block content, or limit access to their rivals' content. That means if a provider wanted to limit access to, for example, anything owned by Comcast, then they could legally block or slow down web content for NBC news or sports, rottentomatoes.com, Universal Studios, Dreamworks, SyFy, and a variety of other things. And that's just the properties Comcast owns.

-You can expect websites to get slower and slower if they don't pay internet providers an extra fee.

It's going to be a long fight that will mostly take place in America's judicial system, and the good news is that the ISPs won't be making too many major changes to their services until after the courts make their judgments. Of all the branches of the US government the judiciary is actually -- perhaps ironically, given that the prototypical judge is appointed for long-term positions -- the most responsive to public opinion and the most progressive in the aggregate.

Unfortunately, certain branches of America's judiciary system, particularly certain Circuit Courts, are also notoriously anti-consumer and pro-business. The flip side though is that this time around tech companies like Google, Amazon and Netflix are on our side.

So it's going to get messy. But don't buy into the conservative hoopla that 'net neutrality is dead.' The FCC in particular under Ajit Pai is basically going to push a narrative for the next year or two that sounds something like this: "Nothing's really changed about the Internet since the Net Neutrality days. See? You could totally trust the ISPs to respect boundaries and the pro-Net Neutrality dork crowd overreacted." And the truth of the matter is, not much will have changed but only because the courts will effectively delay the major changes we fear. It's still coming down the pipe if the courts make bad decisions, so don't let your guard down and keep agitating and advocating.

__________________WARNING: Snek's all up in this thread. Be prepared to read massive walls of text.